To follow through with an eco-conscious commitment made at Elliott Workgroup in 2008, we decided to calculate our carbon footprint at the end of 2008. The goal was to create a baseline from which we can move forward and improve. The baseline carbon footprint was 57.8 metric tons of CO2 annually for the company or approximately 4.8 metric tons of CO2 per employee. Of that total, approximately 29.6 metric tons are attributed to employee commuting.
Elliott Workgroup is located in Park City, Utah and the majority of our employees live within the Park City area. Of the twelve employees from 2008, four commuted from the Salt Lake Valley. One of the four employees commuted only three days a week. As a note, we did not credit participation in the Rocky Mountain Power Blue Sky program and airplane business travel in 2008 was limited.
As a review, our energy use, recycled content paper, and recycling program is very efficient and makes a positive statement on our approach. The largest reduction we can make internally as a business deals with employee commuting. We are currently working on how to refine our efficiencies within the office and reduce our commuting.
What is really interesting is that we have a value. 57.8 metric tons of CO2. We know where we can make a difference, commuting. We have an office in the Salt Lake Valley, but the efficiencies do not outweigh the ability to create architecture in a studio atmosphere. The next steps will depend on the entire staff, their actions and on their individual values, not just the company values.
The last entry was focused on a possible values based solution to a current economic issue affecting the United States. The following text is forward looking and also solutions based. This entry is long and maybe a bit dated, but the reason is clear. I wrote this as a senior in high school in 1981. After 28 years, these dreams are finally coming true. I am currently able to incorporate into my every day work as an architect the dreams of a young man. I found it amazing to look back and realize the time and energy we have been wasting as a country.
Self-Sufficiency in the Home - Tonganoxie High School - May 10, 1981
Energy and fuel prices have accelerated rapidly in the past few years, and this increase may be attributed to the wasting of our natural resources. Due to this great rise in price and the inverse relationship to the energy reserves that we have in this country, a whole new style of thought has been created for almost every homeowner. It is self-sufficiency.
Before further detail is expounded upon the subject, self-sufficiency must be defined and explained. A self-sufficient person is one who needs not rely on anyone else, or in this case a power company, oil company, or even a natural gas company. A self-sufficient person relies merely on what he possesses or maintains. Also intertwined within this idea must be the term efficiency. For if it is not an efficient operation, the ability of sustaining self-sufficiency would be severely hindered.
This self-sufficiency is even more important to today’s style of living than it has been in the past. Gone are the days of putting up chilly concrete coops and smothering them with oil when the wind blows in the winter.1 Since this statement is becoming so true- -as our reserves diminish- -the most likely, inexpensive and feasible way to heat a home in the winter seems to lie in the harnessing of the sun’s energy.
From earliest times the sun was treated as a diety; the giver and sustainer of life.2 It was not until the fourth century B.C. that the potentialities of southern orientation to provide heat was recorded by the Greek writer Xenophon. His suggestion, in liberal translation: Make the south wall higher than the north, thereby providing a large area to absorb the sun’s heat and warm the house while having a much lower north wall “to keep out the winds.”3 This concept has not been forgotten, bust was merely discarded until Dr. Felix Trombe, a French scientist, incorporated it into his design. Only a few modifications were needed to develop one of the first solar homes.
Trombe’s design, like Xenophon’s, has a small north wall and much larger southern exposed wall. The main difference between the two is that Trombe’s south wall is covered completely by glass and backed by a concrete wall, whereas Xenophon’s was a solid wall. Concrete may not be the most attractive exterior but it suits Trombe’s purpose. When used in a wall one foot thick, it will store the sunshine it receives during the day and release it at night. The price of the storage is nil since the wall has already paid for itself by holding up the house.4 To add to this design’s heating ability, moveable vents are placed at the top of the wall near the ceiling and lower near the floor. The positioning of these vents at the places mentioned produce a natural draft, pulling hot air from between the wall and the window into the room at the top vent; therefore, it creates a vacuum that pulls air from the room into the space between the wall and window to be reheated. All this takes place without the use of a single watt of electricity, it will cut the cost of heating that much more. Cooling for the summer can also be adapted to this design. By simply adding a vent in the north wall and one at the top of the windows on the south wall a natural cooling system will be conceived. This is created by the drawing of cool air from the shaded north wall into the house and in turn the pushing of hot air to the outside. This is only one form of solar heating, another from that is more accepted in this country is the flat-plate solar collector.
The flat-plate solar collector usually consists of a large number of small-diameter tubes that run parallel to each other and follow the pitch of the roof. At each end, these tubes are connected to a larger-diameter tube called a header, which runs parallel to the ridge of the roof. Water is usually pumped from a large storage tank into the lower header at the bottom of the roof and from there it flows upward through the small-diameter tubes to the upper header. It then travels through a supply line to the storage tank. The heat distribution through the house is usually by means of fan-coil unit.5 The heat is transferred from the fan-coil unit by forced air which is produced by a blower that forces air through the coil. While passing through the coil the forced air gathers heat from the sun-heated water flowing inside the tubes of the coil. This heated air is then passed to the rooms of the house through a closed duct system. When the water reaches the collector a second time it is noted that all the heat is not collected by just the tubes; much of the heat is collected by a backing sheet called a plate. This plate is connected to the tubes. Since both the plate and tubes are of a conductive metal, such as copper, heat from the entire collector area is conducted to the water, provided that the bond between the plate and the tubes is also highly conductive. This is very important because the surface of the plate exposed to the sun is much greater than that of the tubes. A loss as much as 1,000 B.T.U.’s per hour may be consumed due to the poor conductivity of a bond.6
The flat-plate solar collector is very ingenious way of transferring solar energy into heat. In fact, by comparing the available heat potential of known fossil fuel reserves with the amount of heat the earth receives from the sun every day, we find that the total fuel reserves amount to three weeks sunshine.7 One drawback in this system is that electricity is required to power the pump and the fan, whereas the Trombe wall does not. Although for the average self-sufficient oriented homeowner the solar flat-plate collector is more easily adapted to existing houses that are yearning for the use of solar energy.
To figure the amount of collector space needed, a broad rule-of-thumb is generally used. It calls for a heat collector unit of approximately the equivalent of forty to sixty percent of the heated floor area of the house. A unit of this size, in most cold-winter home heating situations, is expected to carry fifty to seventy-five percent of the heating load.
One major factor which leads to looking toward the sun for their heating needs is the fact that it is a limitless source of useful, clean and extremely safe energy. Although, that is not the only factor involved. Another is that the sun produces, for every square yard of the earth’s surface, rooftop, or solar converter intercepting the direct rays of the sun, approximately 1,000 watts, or 1 kilowatt, or about 1⅓ horsepower.8 This is a substantial amount of energy, more than enough to heat any house if enough area is used as the converter.
There is only one apparent drawback to these systems, that being the unpredictable visibility of the sun. Since this is the law of nature, a house would need a backup system. Any type of conventional system may be used with a so called Trombe wall, but if self-sufficiency is still desired a wood burning furnace may be installed.
The wood burning furnace is one of the most economical ways of completely heating a large house. A wood furnace operates on the same complete combustion principles as an efficient wood stove, so that wood and most residue is reduced to a minimal amount of ash. Unlike stoves, modern wood furnaces can easily be converted to burn oil, propane, or natural gas. Some will switch fuels automatically so that you have a choice of fuel, and can leave the furnace to run on the alternate fuel that you have chosen for lengthy periods of time. When fueled with wood it will require attention about twice a day.
To disperse the heat from the furnace, air is drawn around the fire box and circulated through ducts in the house just as in a conventional forced air heating system. Many wood furnaces are based upon the hot water distribution principle, in which case the firebox is surrounded by water which is then piped into baseboard radiators or radiant floor systems. An investment in a wood furnace is presently not much more than that of a conventional heating system and appears to be a worthwhile investment.
Another problem to be considered when building a self-sufficient house is choosing the proper method of insulating it. The most common method of insulating is the traditional fiberglass insulation or styrofoam. A more innovative method is to build the house underground or surround it with earth embankments. Combining this with fiberglass creates a very well insulated house. By surrounding it with earth the house is often much easier to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. In fact, it is moderately comfortable year round; therefore, cutting the energy input drastically because sixty percent of all energy used in the average house goes into heating it.9
One form of energy that is becoming very popular one again and is also clean and efficient is the wind-electric system of days past. A wind-electric system consists of four basic components; a propeller, a generator, a means of controlling the current output, and usually some means of storing the energy.10 The most efficient form of transfer medium is considered to be the three-bladed propeller. The first reference to propeller type blades for a wind operated machine occurs in Beledor’s work ‘ “L” Architecture Hydraulique,’ written in 1737. By applying modern technology to an existent source, energy can be more easily and readily produced.
Technology is the key to the workings of a good wind-electric system, but to use the technology you must know about the area and conversion factors. To properly and efficiently operate a wind-electric system he must also know the theoretical maximum transfer efficiency from windpower in the swept area of the blades to the rotational power of the shaft and the actual approximation efficiency. The theoretical transfer efficiency has been calculated at 59.3 percent, but in practice the actual efficiency of a well designed machine may reach 40 percent efficiency.11
To produce electricity with this system, a high tip-speed ratio (ratio of the speed of the extremities of the blades to the windspeed) is necessary in order to achieve high torque at high speeds. This theory also maintains that a small are is needed for the blades in comparison to the area that the blades sweep to maintain a high speed-tip ratio.
The power capabilities of the wind are approximately proportional to the cube of the wind velocity. This in more general terms means an average windspeed of seven miles per hour is seldom worth considering for the generating of electricity, but velocities of 10-12 miles per hour can often supply power economically. Wind-electric systems or wind generators, as they are commonly called, are available for 200 watts to 6,000 watts on the commercial market and have a very extravagant price range.
The site for a wind generator must be considered very carefully and the size of the generator depends on how much electricity you use. This amount of electrical use may be calculated in direct proportion to the extravagance of your lifestyle.
The latest design in wind-electric systems, wind generators, or wind chargers, which ever you may choose to use, is the system that does not contain any type of storage medium which is always a problem. Instead of storing the energy, the system is coupled directly to your existing electric lines; therefore, when the generator is not functioning the house continues to be supplied with electrical power.
If the generator produces any surplus amount of electricity the surplus is fed automatically into the transmission lines and the utility company must buy the surplus from the producer.
The windmill is not only a quaint romantic leftover from the past but also an exciting and functioning machine and it must once again assume it’s rightful place in the landscape.12
Self-sufficiency in the home is something that every homeowner is looking toward. By applying the ever increasing technological knowledge of today to the underdeveloped but exciting resources of the past, self-sufficiency could become as accepted as the electricity found within the owner’s home.
1 Daniel Behrman, Solary energy: The Awakening Science (Canada: Little, Brown & Company Limited, 1976), p. 59.
2 D.S. Halacy, Jr., Earth, Water, Wind, and Sun (New York, N.Y.: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1977, p. 148.
3 George Daniels, Solar Homes & Sun Heating (New York, N.Y.: Harper & row, Publishers, 1976) p. 43.
4 Daniel Behrman, p. 58.
5 D.S. Halacy, Jr., p. 169.
6 Peter Clegg, Energy for the Home (Charlotte, Vermont: Garden Way Publishers, 1975), p. 88.
7 Peter Clegg, p. 12.
8 D.S. Halacy, Jr., p. 150.
9 Peter Clegg, p. 12.
10 Peter Clegg, p. 88.
11 Donald E. Carr, Energy and the Earth Machine (W.W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 1976), p. 147.
12 Peter Clegg, p. 107.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Daniel Behrman, Solar Energy: The Awakening Science, Canada: Little, Brown & Company Limited, 1976.
D.S. Halacy, Jr., Earth, Water, Wind, and Sun, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977.
George Daniels, Solar Homes and Sun Heating, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1976.
Peter Clegg, Energy for the Home, Charlotte, Vermont: Garden Way Publishers, 1975.
Donald E. Carr, Energy and the Earth Machine, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 1976
